


pieces of bone

by goldleaf1066



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e07 Digestivo, M/M, Slash, Will 'sick of this shit' Graham, do they do the do, i spent more time formatting it than actually writing, mostly canon, they do, vague spoilers for Digestivo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 09:31:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4871755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldleaf1066/pseuds/goldleaf1066
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal brings Will home. There they say goodbye, in their own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pieces of bone

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place at the end of Digestivo; un-beta'd.

Will wakes up to footsteps through snow. The world is topsy-turvy: his head lolls upside down and he can see calves clad darkly striding ahead in front of his face, kicking up debris. He recognises the gait, he knows who is carrying him. It’s okay, just now, to forget the questions of how and why and where to, and once there for what purpose. Will shuts his eyes and inhales the scent of clear air and pinewood. Hannibal will know he’s awake from the change in his breathing but he doesn’t slow or stop.

It’s Wolf Trap. It’s his house, no longer lit up from within but dark and dustier, quiet without the doggy onslaught. The stale scent of canine is there and it makes something deep in Will’s heart flicker. The screen door slams shut behind them; he is lowered onto his back, onto his bed, and left alone. The door is unlocked, the lights off, no heat, no noise save the creak of the armchair by the bed as Hannibal sinks into it and watches him, breathing through his nose. Will does sleep then, exhaustion drowns him; he is boneless beneath the waves. He banks on Hannibal’s fatigue and the fact that to make a display of Will’s corpse requires effort and energy: it is unlikely that Hannibal would kill him today, as much as Will could ever assume it was unlikely. Will has time to dream and Hannibal loses consciousness before he does in any case.

The sky is still white outside when Will resurfaces. Staring at the ceiling, he tries not to piece together why he is still alive, for the most part physically intact. This would mean acknowledging that Hannibal has rescued him and it hurts to exhale much less laugh. He never wants to see Hannibal again in this life. 

 

“Get in.”

Hannibal nods awake. Will is sitting up in the bed and has kicked his shoes off onto the floor. He watches Hannibal adjust in the chair, shift his shoulders, stretch his neck and take in the pulled-back bedspread before speaking.

“I am weary Will, not cold.” His eyebrows rise only slightly. His is the flat, shallow stare of the shark; he has a grin to match but doesn’t show it or the misaligned teeth that have bitten out protesting tongues and into hearts raw and warm and seeping.

“Maybe not,” Will says, “but I am.”

Snow is falling again. Will has all of his clothes on under the blanket except for his shoes and he lies down again on his back. Hannibal takes off his coat and drapes it on top of the covers. He then sits on the edge of the bed and unlaces his shoes, toeing them off one after the other. And then he gets in beside Will, like Will knew he would. Not because he’s cold, but because he wants to see what will happen.   
  
  
-  
  
  
Hannibal rests on his side facing Will. Will can feel his gaze but ignores it; one of the (many) cuts on his cheek is weeping, he can now smell the blood and feels its oozing dampness. Blood heat, body heat. Hannibal radiates both. Will never wants to see him again, this other other half of the other half of him. 

“You brought me home,” he says to the ceiling.

“I believe this is the only place you have ever felt safe. My escape was contingent on my keeping a promise to that effect to Dr. Bloom.”

“You took a circular saw to my forehead.”

“That was before I encountered Dr. Bloom.” Hannibal reaches over and runs fingertips over the bandage on Will’s head and Will doesn’t have to look at him to know that he’s got the smile on his face that says  _I made you, and I am proud_. Less of a smile, really, just the ghost of muscle memory. Hannibal sweeps his hand down and wipes the blood from Will’s cheek. Will doesn’t see what he does with that. “I keep my promises, Will.”

 

Wool, even wet wool, will trap body-heat more effectively than cotton, and the addition of another body in itself will prolong survival. The blanket is woollen but Will is cold, a response, he knows, to emotional trauma; his body resorts to base reactions, to shivering, to drowsiness, the desperate need to rest unhindered. Hannibal’s arms pull him closer and he rolls to face him and moves into the harbour of his embrace as he has in the past. He doesn’t even hate him; he feels enough self-loathing to serve the purpose already. 

“Promise me something?” Will asks Hannibal’s neck. He can hate himself a little more for begging. He will never have a quiet life with all of the horror in his head but if Hannibal will leave him alone-…but Hannibal can’t be bargained with, not if the one proposing the deal is Will Graham. He may keep promises but it’s up to Hannibal if he makes them or not and Hannibal will not promise him anything because  _he is Will Graham_. Hannibal is a fickle slave to whimsy; the cat curiosity daren't kill. He can destroy Will because he created him, because it suits him, as easily as he can leave him be for the rest of his life.

Hannibal doesn’t even answer, just runs his palm over Will’s shoulders and back over his shirt, up and down. It relaxes Will, and he presses his face to Hannibal’s throat and feels the movement of his Adam’s apple against his cheek as Hannibal swallows. He can’t trust Hannibal, but he can push his hands up under his clothing and settle fingers between ribs. His skin is warm, his heart, when Will runs his palm over his chest, beats steadily. The smell of him is comforting. The thought of _that_ is comfort's equal and opposite.

“Are you still cold, Will?” Hannibal’s voice is a low rumble that Will both hears and feels. Outside, the wind is rattling distant and barren trees. Will thinks of walking through the woodland around his home while the dogs bounded ahead yipping and tussling; of hunting for feathers, pieces of bone for his lures; of cranking up the space heater and working late into the night wrapping delicate fishing line around them as his pups snored. He thinks of the river, of the chill that would creep steadily thigh-wards as he waded, of the whip of the rod, of the gem-gleam of the trout in mid-air caught in the winter sun. Of eating it with boiled new potatoes, green beans. Of reading his books. Of fixing old boats and washing elbow-high streaks of engine oil from his arms and of when he used to sleep and awaken and recall nothing but dreams of clear water and smooth stones underfoot. With all that taken from him he can never be warm again. 

He nods. Hannibal pushes Will’s head away, pulls his shirt collar open, bites down hard on his trapezius muscle.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Will cannot pretend this wasn’t premeditated on his part. He has had no conscious sexual attraction to Hannibal throughout their acquaintanceship that he’d ever entertained pursuing. In the beginning there brimmed irritation, boredom of this strange man and his sartorial idiosyncrasies. Then respect, what he thought was trust; the affection, insofar as Will was capable, for a friend. Admiration, twisted. Obsession. They have danced so long at the edge of platonic mania with each other, magnetism so strong that one would find the other across oceans, across continents, sacrificing all to be with the one worst and best for him. So why not this, now. The final act.  _Let’s leave nothing to return to each other for._  
  
  
-  
  
  
Hannibal is a good kisser; no, he’s better than good, and Will opens up to him, drops his jaw and discovers, pouring his tongue into Hannibal’s mouth, that Hannibal drew blood from his shoulder. He licks the taste of it from Hannibal’s teeth, and glances up to see that Hannibal’s eyes are closed as if he’s actually  _into this_ and Will believes it. Hannibal has always been tactile with him, the touch on the shoulder, the hand bracing the back of his head as the knife penetrates offal. From here Will can see the downward crescent of Hannibal’s eyelashes and the lines around his eyes and he claws his hand up and over Hannibal’s shoulder-blade beneath the shirt, pulling him down, hooking his leg over Hannibal’s hips; so cold, so,  _so_  cold.

“Patience, Will,” Hannibal mumbles into his mouth, bearing down on him.  _I am not going anywhere_. 

 

The blanket and Hannibal’s coat end up tangled between two sets of shins and then kicked onto the floor; Will’s pants a figure-of-eight trapping his ankles where he shoved them from his hips in frustration. Hannibal is kneeling, one of Will’s thighs between his own, and Will is half sitting, trying to get shaking hands into Hannibal’s clothes when Hannibal pushes him back against the mattress and leans over him, their hips meeting at all the wrong angles. Hannibal is hard, Will not so much, but he’ll get there, he’s on his way. Hannibal is still dressed, and Will clenches one fist in the back of his shirt and the other in his hair, pulling, twisting. He kisses him with savagery, and Hannibal returns it with tenderness.

Will cannot breathe and doesn’t want to. He can’t hate Hannibal, it’s beyond that. He just wants it to be over. They find a rhythm, fall in and out of it and Hannibal has the audacity to rasp Will’s name into his ear as he nears the edge. Will clenches his jaw against further intrusion or expletive. Sweat pours from him, and _everything_ hurts. He looks Hannibal in the eye as he climaxes. Hannibal’s hair is awry, his pale brows furrowed; he stiffens and falls against Will heavily, trapping him. Will breathes in the scent of sex and death and chokes back a laugh; he has never seen Hannibal quite so undone as this.

They locked fingers together above Will’s head on the pillow in the midst of things, and now they are loath to unclasp, lying as they are, mostly alive.  
  
  
-  
  
  
The blue-red strobe of the police lights rouses Will and he jerks into awareness. It’s cold again, his skin prickles; he’s alone.

Sitting up again, he finds that the covers are back on the bed, and Hannibal’s coat is gone. The house is dark, the gravel-crunch of more than one vehicle pulling up outside prompts Will to search out his underwear, his glasses. Pants back on, shirt askew, he runs fingers through sex-hair and wants to lock the door, pull closed the shutters, block it all out once and for all, no aftermath, please and thank you. He’s going to have to face Crawford, and he imagines stepping out and telling him that he just had a one night stand with the Chesapeake Ripper. Somehow he doubts Jack will even blink at this point, with what they’ve survived. He imagines Jack hi-fiving him; with Hannibal gone his sense of humour is coming back, apparently; a frightening prospect.

Looking around him, if Will ignores the ruin inside his head, the mental evidence, it’s as none of it ever happened. His possessions, disorderly, meagre, surround him; from the window at the rear of the house he can see the silhouette of bare trees against the blackening sky, the shimmer of snowflakes descending. He wants to slip out and walk until the cold takes him, shoeless, unbathed, smelling of his friend, the taste of his undoing on his lips. 

Instead, he opens the front door and steps out to face whatever happens next.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :) This was a little foray into the fandom which has ruined my life for the past three years. I've had major writers' block for probably about as long so I'm happy to get the creative juices flowing again even if my premise has probably been already done countless times.
> 
> I only watched this episode once so probably got loads of stuff wrong, and I've only watched up to this episode so far so I am in the unique position of not knowing just what cray-ass shit is going to happen now that Hannibal's surrendered to the po-po, hee hee.


End file.
